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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to consider aa a dangerous cult?

923 replies

Kirkers · 29/01/2010 03:47

I am ready to be attacked by cult members.

I have read 'theorangepapers' online which is very well researched, and 'twelve step horror stories' (also available to read online) and they prove to me (on top of my own experience) that aa does much more harm than good. In every proper, conrolled experiment aa produces worse results than any other treatment, including doing nothing. It is unquestionably a cult(Google, 'is aa a cult'). Yet 93% (I am not sure about that figure, sorry) of treatment centres follow the same model. That would be the £10 billion treatment industry.

I hope this isn't too off topic for mumsnet. They do involved children too. It is awful.

I first came to mumsnet following the Julie/Jake Myerson thread. The detective work that went on was phenonmenal. Is there anyone out there breastfeeding or too pregnant to move who could look into the orange papers and tell me I'm not Erin bigchest Eronovich.

This is an absolutely genuine request for feedback from people who are prepared to consider the actual black and white evidence of this extraordinarily powerful organisation.

Thanks.

OP posts:
ImSoNotTelling · 29/01/2010 23:54

Exactly expat.

And yes things change with time. My drinking didn't change, my life changed, and my drinking was no longer compatible. So i did something about it.

namechanged789 · 29/01/2010 23:57

Umm, MIFLAW, I did the steps, and they did nothing at all for me.

Changing my life into one I actually wanted to live was the ticket for me...

Heathcliffscathy · 29/01/2010 23:58

addicts are not 'shits'. jesus.

namechange, great post, although as others have pointed out different groups have different flavours i expect. the ability to work and to love are the cornerstones of mental health (and a fulfilling life) imo.

namechanged789 · 30/01/2010 00:00

exactly sophable, I was risking becoming institutionalised by AA's insistence that I didn't work - a 12 month gap on my CV would have killed my career stone dead, and it is that which has been the lifeline that's kept me in the land of the normal people.

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:02

I was a shit when I was abusing.

I know not all are.

But I was.

I did some really, really, really bad things (not murder or that), but some fucked up stuff.

And, well, now, we live over an addict. A junkie/speed freak and a drug peddler and a violent drunk.

Sorry, but he acts like a shit when he's using.

He doesn't give a rat's arse about us or how he fucked up our lives.

He has two daughters, who thankfully live nowhere near him, but he's a shit who has nowt to do with them.

ImSoNotTelling · 30/01/2010 00:04

MIFLAW I didn't know you were a man

Always nice to see you.

However I would at this point like to point pout that I am neither a shit, nor suffering deep seated psychological problems

namechanged I'm so pleased that things worked out for you in the end. Thanks for the monster post!

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:05

And you know what? The only reason he stopped partying, and he did for a logged 32 out of 40 nights, was because he did something to piss off someone and they came looking for him.

He doesn't give a toss about what he did to us or our lives, after going through the homeless process.

He really doesn't.

So, yeah, I have lost sympathy.

Becuase we are stuck over this guy until we get the money saved up to move, and we're in big time debt just moving in here because it is council (now all HA) and had to buy stuff like a cooker and washing machine) and then that means we get the insecurity of the private renter.

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:07

Sorry, but this addict is a shit who still has me on tenterhooks, even though he has been hiding with a woman just one stair down who has a kid!

We still get woken up at 3AM by people trying to kill him.

And until then, he just didn't care that he woke up my son at 3AM with his parties.

Ever know what it's like to live with someone like that and you have nowhere to go?

namechanged789 · 30/01/2010 00:08

Sorry to hear that expatinscotland. It must be horrible for you to have to experience that, but that guy basically has 3 ways he can go

  1. To carry on as he is

  2. To try to sort his life out

  3. To join NA/AA/CA

IME 2 is the harder choice, but so much more rewarding if he can manage it. 3 is (IMO) just 'opting out' of the real world, which strikes me as sad, as he may well have a happy and fulfilling life if he manages to pull off 2.

Any of the 12 step fellowships will give the illusion of normality, but in reality it is just a bizzarre bubble of surreality.

namechanged789 · 30/01/2010 00:09

think we xposted there expatinscotland so sorry, that must be awful for you...

ImSoNotTelling · 30/01/2010 00:10

Scary stuff. Have brushed with some really dodgy types in my time. It is not good. And that way of life becomes normalised IYSWIM, you start to forget how far removed it is from nice normal people.

Sounds dire expat.

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:10

Oh, and his mate, a drug dealer and junkie, drove off our neighbour across from us. I'll hate him forever if the next person they shove in there is anything like him.

His mate is a convicted murderer who is living in the flat with his partner and her two kids.

My neighbour saw one of those kids burning a stolen car in the car park, and said as much to the police.

So the guy and his bird threatened to kill her and her kids.

Yep. She ran off in the middle of the night.

So tbh I've sort of lost sympathy for people who know their habit is making them shits and they just don't care.

Because I have to live around them.

It's not a matter of choice, either.

ImSoNotTelling · 30/01/2010 00:12

Would they be shits without the addictions though?

Hard to say, but some people are just shits.

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:13

He's had loads of chances to sort himself out, namechange.

He must not want to, because he carries on.

And before anyone trots out this 'He's mentally ill, poor thing' business to me, know that he's obviously well enough to hide and still keep dealing, because that door of his still keeps going, day and night, in the back.

Try living over someone like this. With your kids.

And then report back and tell me he's not a shit.

ImSoNotTelling · 30/01/2010 00:13

I'm off to bed anyway, night all

MIFLAW · 30/01/2010 00:14

Namechanged

"[i] was basically shooed into AA." Who by? Not by AA, I'm guessing?

"Then after about 3 months, I came under enormous pressure to believe in god (and I mean serious pressure)." From? Was it all alcoholics, a few, the organisation? Certainly you wouldn't have from me because I am an agnostic and seven years sober. My agnosticism - which I speak openly about in meetings - has never posed me a problem. If anyone takes issue with it I just avoid them, the same way as I ignore idiots outside the Fellowship.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of pressure I came under to stay" - a lot of us have seen people we like "go back out there" and die. Perhaps your local AAs were heavy handed, but is there any chance at all that it was out of concern for you rather than cultism?

"all they do is to draw in vulnerable people" - horseshit. Did they draw you in, or were you (as you imply) sent by loved ones or medical professionals?

"They actively advocate against employment and relationships" - horseshit. They advise against entering new relationships in the early part of sobriety. Many who ignore this advice regret doing so because they often don't know who they are without adrink and it is a poor idea to drag someone else into that. But I have NEVER, in eight years' membership, heard anyone advocate against work or against staying in established relationships where there are no other problems.

"AA creates their cult by trying to make its members believe that they are somehow different from the rest of the world, and that only an AA member will really understand you." Inaccurate. A lot of alcoholics feel that only another alcoholic really understands them. However, as this thread alone proves, not all alcoholics are in AA, or even sober.

"As the average AA member (especially early in their AA career) only associates with other AA members" - horseshit. Even members who go to a meeting a day (which is by no means all of us) they are spending 90 minutes in AA rooms and 14 and a half hours in the real world. Also, in my own experience, my AA friends and my outside friends are two very distinct groups. I do not think I am rare in this respect.

"their protestations that unless you attend 3 meetings a week and abstain from Alcohol for life then you will die" - I have never heard any such protestation.

"I was that desperate." "I am absolutely furious with the cult that is AA" - WHY? What have they done to you that's so bad? You didn't like it, you left. Supposing they did nag you to stay - did they bar the door? Have they harrassed you since? You were desperate, they helped you, you didn't want their help, you moved on. Furious? Fuck me, I'd hate to see you when someone's actually nasty to you.

Last but not least, are you willing to concede that your experience of AA is just that - your experience - andnot really to be taken generally?

Me personally, one of the things I have learnt in AA is indeed only to talk from my own experience and make it clear that that is what I'm doing. I find it works well in life.

maristella · 30/01/2010 00:14

surely the whole purpose is to remove the destructive dependency? and dependency often results in shitty behaviour!! it does so as the addicts' priority is no longer the wellbeing of themselves or their loved ones, but to escape a particular reality and/or fuel the addiction.
as a drugs worker i met alot of people who had been through 12 steps with NA and CA. none were religious, just spiritual. the emphasis was placed on the higher power that the individual believes in.
the requirement for the acceptance of a higher power seemed to me to be based upon a need for acceptance that the addict has no control over their drug of choice: they are attending such meetings as a result of the control their chosen drug has over their life.

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:15

That's neither here nor there, IMO, ImSo, because we're the ones who get to live over him, and he's using.

I'm on the max amoutn of Effexor a person can take.

And I live with worrying if someone will petrol bomb that place and kill us all.

there's someone coming in just now.

MIFLAW · 30/01/2010 00:16

MIFLAW = addict = shit.

Should have made it clear I was only sharing from my own experience ...

maristella · 30/01/2010 00:17

also another thing i noticed from people who had enjoyed succes through the 12 step prog was a real sense of brotherhood. they had sought this feeling initially through their drug/drink using community, and found that the prog promoted the very relationships they had needed to find in the first place.
at the end of the day, if it works - go for it, irrespective of other's experience of the method

MIFLAW · 30/01/2010 00:19

"Umm, MIFLAW, I did the steps, and they did nothing at all for me."

Fair enough, though I've yet to meet someone they genuinely did nothing for, even if it's just to make them less arrogance and give a fuck about others.

But what I said was that the purpose of the steps was to address the cause, not just to achieve abstinence. I'm sorry they didn't work for you, but that doesn't change their purpose.

namechanged789 · 30/01/2010 00:19

Well Ladies (and Gent) I'm off to bed...

Expat, I don't dispute for a second that addicts of any kind don't really deserve sympathy (it was, in fact when sympathy for me ran out that I finally sorted myself out).

I do believe, however that whatever kick up the behind they do deserve, it shouldn't be in the direction of a 12 step fellowship.

I believe that an incentive to get sober/clean in the form of a job/relationship/life is more effective than just giving yourself over to the care of God and hoping for the best.

I hope things improve for you soon.

Night all

MIFLAW · 30/01/2010 00:22

"Any of the 12 step fellowships will give the illusion of normality, but in reality it is just a bizzarre bubble of surreality." So my child, my (sort of) wife (not from AA, by the way), my new career and resulting responsible job in local government, my writing and songwriting, my occasional forays into five-a-side (NONE of this with people from AA) - these are all just a Dali painting, are they?

namechanged789 · 30/01/2010 00:24

MIFLAW - your rant exemplifies the reason I am so happy to be free of the AA cult

Night all

expatinscotland · 30/01/2010 00:28

namechange, if a 12 step programme is what stopped this guy from peddling his crap and being a shit, then i can't say i'd give a toss how he came about it.

his problem isn't booze, it's junk and speed to counter that.

and as to anyone who has great sympathy as a 'poor thing', well, come on up and live here, with your kids, and we'll gladly swap.

because he is a shit and hte only reason he lays low now is because he did some drug gang even bigger shit than he is wrong.

he's a low life right now.

and well, that's where we all have to live, in the here and now.